My experience of JSS Health Centre, Bilaspur, India |
| Coming from a (relatively) well-resourced healthcare system to the unforgivingly hot and rural destination of Bilaspur certainly gave us a lot to ponder. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the scene of rolling into work, in the hospital jeep - to scores of people camping outside the hospital complex. Only then do you realise what real medicine and really being a doctor is about. When Dr Yogesh told us that the hospital caters for around 1.5 million people, I didn’t quite believe him but what’s more amazing is how such a small team manages it. A lesson I learnt from the experience was how resource-conscious all the staff had to be - whether it be reusing clinical gloves or autoclaving instruments, or being very judicious in the choice of medical tests and investigations. It really showed the clinical skills of all the doctors, that they would correctly diagnose many conditions in the absence of certain tests. Indeed, when Sushil (basically the fixer of the whole place) showed us around the applied technology unit, I was honestly taken aback by the ingenuity of the whole operation. Spacer devices in the UK for respiratory conditions that cost an arm and a leg, had been replaced by a sealed metal tumbler. Simple, effective and cheap - we could certainly use a dose of that kind of lean thinking in the NHS. |
| It’s a Saturday morning on the JSS campus and this morning we are driving out to visit the community centres where doctors hold their weekly clinics. From the Jeep’s rear seat, I peer out across the northern Chhattisgarhi farmlands – the pace of life is quieter compared to the bustle of Bilaspur and Ganiyari. We hop off the jeep at the community clinic and have a quick tour of the centre. A sheltered area where all of the notes are kept, a kitchen, a basic laboratory and finally the consultation room. It is a small centre but busy nonetheless with patients sat out in the yard waiting their turn to be seen. I seek refuge under the ceiling fan which blows a cooling breeze as the first patients are seen. |
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Thanks to Tom Pietrasik for photographs of JSS
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